ATM fraud: Accenture pushes for forensic data analysis

The Managing Director, Accenture Technology, Nigeria, Mr. Niyi Tayo, has urged stakeholders in the banking and information communication technology (ICT) sectors to undertake a deep analysis of data released by the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) in its yearly report.

NDIC had lamented that generally, fraud cases in the banking sector increased by 15.71 per cent last year as a total of 12,279 fraud cases were reported, representing an increase of15.71 per cent over the 10,612 fraud cases reported the previous year. The cash involved in the fraud cases, however, decreased by N7.59 billion or 29.63 per cent from N25.608 billion in 2014 to N18.021 billion last year, which it noted is significant.

Tayo, who spoke in Lagos on the sideline during the formal award of Platinum Partner certificate to Accenture Nigeria by Hewlett Packard, said with the evolution of ICT, the world has become a global village.

He said: “I think without a doubt, data breaches and frauds perpetrated through technology is a global case. The world has become smaller village and borders have been broken and so technologies and skills are also becoming fluid across the world. In the past when you have something happening only in the western countries and not in Africa for example, that used to be in the past, those situations don’t exist again. Anything can now happen anywhere in the world with technology and therefore it does not also remove the fact that security and threat and attacks will also be regionalised, it is now global. It is only expected that there would be increase in threats and attacks from a technology stand point.

“Now that NDIC has produced its result, I think what needs to happen now is a proper analysis of the landscape of the different banking institutions to understudy their level of preparedness to counter these threats that are borderless. And then of course once the analysis is done, you can understand where the potential weaknesses are and then you can leverage the right solutions potentially the ones from HPE to counter those threats. HPE products are used globally when it comes to security management, so it is something that can be considered as part of the suits of strategies to address cyber threats in the industry itself.”

He said the alliance between HPE and Accenture will bring an unparallel expertise and capability to the market, adding that it will help the local business institutions to solve challenging problems around how to be able to respond faster to business demands as business demands change in terms of deploying the right technology. There is a product that helps to do that from an application development and management perspective, Tayo added.

“The second thing is security. With this collaboration, with the right skills and capability available in Nigeria to Nigerian businesses; they can then develop the right strategies to detect threats, such as cyber attacks. The partnership hence provides unparalleled opportunities for businesses to be able to perform at a higher level. So, the businesses will benefit from that, customers will benefit from that, government too will benefit from that. So, it is a win-win for all stakeholders,” he said.

According to the report, fraud cases perpetrated through the use of automated teller machine (ATM) and other card payment system also rose 11.95 per cent over previous year’s cases.